Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

여러분, 안녕하세요? 에이미에요. Hi, everybody! I’m Amy.
Welcome back to KoreanClass101.com’s 삼분 한국어, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Korean.
In the last lesson we learned the phrase, 얼마에요? ("How much is it?"). We also learned how to understand the answer. It will be a Chinese-based number followed by the word 원 and 이에요. By now, you should be able to understand any amount up to 999 won.
But that won’t get you very far in Korea! Coins come in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, and 500 won. Bills come in 1000, 5000, 10000, and recently 50000.
Why are these numbers so big? Because a single won isn’t worth very much money. Even if you’re just going to pick up a cheap lunch, you’ll end up paying thousands of won!
Because the numbers involved in Korean prices are so high, you'll need to be able to count above 999.
The Korean word for "thousand" is 천. Do you know how to say "one thousand five hundred won"? Of course—it's 천 오백 원!
What about something that costs ten thousand won? You might expect this number to be 십천 원 because it has ten thousands. But actually, there's no such number as 십천. Like Chinese, Korean has a special unit for ten thousand: That’s 만.
So "ten thousand four hundred won" would be “만 사백원."
Can you guess how to say "twelve thousand won"?
Yes, it's 만 이천 원!
What about "one hundred thousand."? Can you figure out how to say that?
You didn't say 백천, did you? Koreans don't think of "one hundred thousand" as a hundred thousands; we think of it as ten “ten-thousands”. So we say it 십만. That's 십 ("ten") times 만 ("ten thousand").
Now it’s time for Amy’s insights.
The won takes its name from this Chinese character. Believe it or not, so do the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan. Those are just different names for the same Chinese character, which originally means "round."
In this lesson we learned how to count won. Next time, we'll look at ways get a discount.
다음에 또 봐요!

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